“During the early 1980s, New York experienced a community-driven musical renaissance. The result was an era of creativity and genre-defying performance that stands as one of the most influential in musical and cultural history. A wide range of music, from punk to pop to hip-hop to salsa to jazz, mixed in a dynamic arts scene that stretched across clubs and bars, theaters, parks, and art spaces. Together, they provided fertile ground for a musical revolution—one that continues to influence pop culture to this day. Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of MTV, New York, New Music: 1980–1986 will highlight diverse musical artists—from Run DMC to the Talking Heads, from Madonna to John Zorn—as a lens to explore the broader music and cultural scene, including the innovative media outlets, venues, record labels, fashion and visual arts centered in New York City in these years. ...”
New York, New Music 1980–1986
Plan Ahead for the 2023 Annular Solar Eclipse — and a Visit to Dark Sky Parks
Chicago '82: A Dip in the Lake (1982)
A Dip in the Lake—Ten Quick Steps, Sixty-one Waltzes and Fifty-six Marches for Chicago and Vicinity, Peter Gena, 1982
A Beautiful, High-Resolution Map of the Internet (2021)
How America Fractured Into Four Parts
Cooking with C. L. R. James - Valerie Stivers
Patti Smith's by Robert Miller Gallery - 1
127 years after his death, letters of love and angst still come to Rimbaud’s grave., Patti Smith Buys Rimbaud’s Replicated Childhood Home in France
The Paris Review - Holy Disobedience: On Jean Genet’s The Thief’s Journal By Patti Smith, Three Stones for Jean Genet told Patti Smith (Video)
Red Bull Music Academy - Left of the Dial: The Evolution of Punk, New Wave and Indie on American Radio (Video)
NOWNESS: Wild Leaves (Video)
YouTube: My Blakean Year | LIVE from the NYPL, The Last Hotel, Poem about Arthur Rimbaud, Patti Smith interviewed by Tom Snyder, Patti Smith and Jonathan Lethem in Conversation 54:41
UbuWeb: Sound - Patti Smith (Audio)
A metalwork dreamscape at a 1929 Gracie Square co-op
Sheets of sound
Senate Report Details Security Failures in Jan. 6 Capitol Riot
“Top federal intelligence agencies failed to adequately warn law enforcement officials before the Jan. 6 riot that pro-Trump extremists were threatening violence, including plans to ‘storm the Capitol,’ infiltrate its tunnel system and ‘bring guns,’ according to a new report by two Senate committees that outlines large-scale failures that contributed to the deadly assault.An F.B.I. memo on Jan. 5 warning of people traveling to Washington for ‘war’ at the Capitol never made its way to top law enforcement officials. The Capitol Police failed to widely circulate information its own intelligence unit had collected as early as mid-December about the threat of violence on Jan. 6, including a report that said right-wing extremist groups and supporters of President Donald J. Trump had been posting online and in far-right chat groups about gathering at the Capitol, armed with weapons, to pressure lawmakers to overturn his election loss. ...”
2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election, 2021 February: First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack., 2021 February: A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack , 2021 March: Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol, 2021 March 21: ‘We’ve Lost the Line!’: Radio Traffic Reveals Police Under Siege at Capitol, 2021 April: Capitol Police Told to Hold Back on Riot Response on Jan. 6, Report Finds, 2021 May: Trump Is Marching Down the Road to Political Violence
Philosophers Drinking Coffee: The Excessive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard
2010 September: Espresso, April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo, 2015 November: The Case for Bad Coffee, 2016 January: 101 Places to Find Great Coffee in New York (2014), 2017 June: How Cold Brew Changed the Coffee Business, 2017 September: Our 7 Favorite Literary Coffee Shops, 2017 October: Clever Literary Coffee Poster, 2017 October: Coffee as Existential Statement: A Crisis in Every Cup on Valencia Street, 2018 February: The Trencherman: A Tale of Two Coffee Shops, 2020 April: Unfair trade, April 2020: A (Very) Brief History of NYC Espresso, 2020 May: The Islamic History of Coffee, 2021 January: The Life Cycle of a Cup of Coffee: The Journey from Coffee Bean, to Coffee Cup
2011 July: Søren Kierkegaard, 2013 April: Repetition (1843), 2013 December: The Quotable Kierkegaard, 2014 October: Fear and Trembling - Søren Kierkegaard (1843), 2014 December: The Dark Knight of Faith - Existential Comics, 2015 July: I still love Kierkegaard, 2015 October: The Concept of Anxiety (1844), 2016 October: Cruel intentions, 2017 July: Søren Kierkegaard Newsletter, 2018 January: Either/Or (1843), 2018 November: The Seducer’s Diary (1843), 2020 July: Søren Kierkegaard’s Struggle with Himself, 2020 November: W. H. Auden - The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard (1952), 2020 December: Inhuman communication: Søren Kierkegaard versus the internet
International thief thief
“In 1909, Sir Ralph Denham Rayment Moor, British Consul General of the British Southern Nigerian Protectorate, took his life by ingesting cyanide. Eleven years earlier, following Britain’s ‘punitive’ attack on Benin City’s Royal Court, Moor helped transfer loot taken from Benin City into Queen Victoria’s private collection and to the British Foreign Office. Pilfered materials taken by Moor and many others include the now famous brass reliefs depicting the history of the Benin Kingdom—known collectively as the Benin Bronzes. This is in addition to commemorative brass heads and tableaux; carved ivory tusks; decorative and bodily ornaments; healing, divining, and ceremonial objects; and helmets, altars, spoons, mirrors, and much else. ...”
Liner Notes for Marcus Fischer’s Monocoastal
What Happened During the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, One of the Worst Episodes of Racial Violence in U.S. History
Freddie McKay / Augustus Pablo - I'm A Freeman (1973)
15 Essential Italian Neorealism Films You Need To Watch
“In Italy, fascism and cinema had always been in a strange relationship. After millions of deaths, years of war and violence; fascism left only two positive things behind: Venice Film Festival and Cinecitta. Fascism, as a consequence of WWII, left thousands of people homeless in Italy; and of course, filmmakers studioless. Great Italian Studio Cinecitta, established by Benito Mussolini in 1937, was damaged significantly during the battles and bombings. This led the filmmakers to go into streets, to experience live action. ... From humanism to communism, from liberal to socialist, this new generation searched for new ways to tell stories of post-war Italy (even, Europe), to formulate a story by keeping the budget low and to hold Zeitgeist in palms of their hands. ...”
The Impressionist Art of Seeing and Being Seen
“The still of the seaside, away from the noise and gossip of the city. Lapping waves, gentle breeze. It's a bit overcast, but why complain? We’re on vacation. Impressionist paintings, after decades of auction records and print-on-demand posters, have become the most reliable crowd-pleasers of European art. Pretty light. Happy haystacks. Believe me: In 1875, they were hardly so soothing. They were views of a society rocketing through modernization, and losing its bearings as it accelerated. ...”
Impossible Owls: Essays from the Ends of the World - Brian Phillips
Laurie Spiegel - Waveshaper TV. Part 1 of 3: Bell Labs
2011 May: Laurie Spiegel, 2012 November: Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe, 2014 February: The Interstellar Contract, 2015 September: Resident Visitor: Laurie Spiegel's Machine Music, 2015 October: Laurie Spiegel: Grassroots Technologist, 2016 June: Meet Four Women Who Pioneered Electronic Music: Daphne Oram, Laurie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliveros, 2017 January: Resident Visitor: Laurie Spiegel's Machine Music, 2017 July: Space, Energy & Light: Experimental Electronic And Acoustic Soundscapes 1961-88, 2017 July: Watch Aura Satz’s short film about Laurie Spiegel, 2019 January: Obsolete Systems (2001)
Habibi Funk: The Scorpions & Saif Abu Bakr - Jazz, Jazz, Jazz
Gowanus Canal
“The Gowanus Canal (originally known as the Gowanus Creek) is a 1.8-mile-long (2.9 km) canal in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, on the westernmost portion of Long Island. Once a vital cargo transportation hub, the canal has seen decreasing use since the mid-20th century, parallel with the decline of domestic waterborne shipping. It continues to be used for occasional movement of goods and daily navigation of small boats, tugs and barges. ... The canal arose in the mid-19th century from local tidal wetlands and freshwater streams. By the end of the 19th century, heavy industrial use had caused large amounts of pollutants to drain into the Gowanus Canal. Various attempts to remove the pollution or dilute the canal's water have failed. Even though most industrial tenants stopped using the Gowanus Canal in the middle of the 20th century, the pollution was never remedied. ...”
YouTube: Dredging Starts on the Gowanus Canal, One of America’s Dirtiest Waterways, Gowanus, Brooklyn | DiverseCITY
2016 May: GOWANUS! Brooklyn’s Troubled Waters
Sans-culottes
2014 February: French Revolution Digital Archive, 2015 July: A Guide to the French Revolution, 2016 April: Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France, 2017 March: Paris Commune 1871, 2018 February: Flash Mob: Revolution, Lightning, and the People’s Will, 2020 February: The French Rural Revolution 1789-1793